There's a few key differences between Iraq/Afghanistan and Vietnam (although a huge amount of similarity): 1. No draft. For the vast majority of Americans this is a war that other people fight. 2. A much more sophisticated propaganda machine from the DoD, intelligence agencies, and defense contractor industry. 3. An excuse for the war that (a) actually happened and (b) hits much closer to home for a lot of people.
political views are more hereditary now, instead of come to through introspection.
Really? This isn't a new phenomenon in the slightest. To quote W.S. Gilbert, writing in 1900 (in Iolanthe): "I often think it's comical – Fal, lal, la! How Nature always does contrive – Fal, lal, la! That every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!"
I'm not sure about that particular article, but the trend in general is nothing new, and not a joke. When the economy goes south, more women end up doing sex work in order to make ends meet. One could argue about the morality of that decision, but the reality of it is hard to dispute.
Sounds like you need to work someplace with more enlightened management. My office has a pretty clear set of rules about time management:
- Get your work done when you said you would. Estimates can be revised as need be, but will be questioned and negotiated.
- Be at any meetings that you are scheduled to be at.
- How you do that is essentially up to you. If you want to work 10A-7P, or 7A-4P, that's your business.
In other words, this is a pitch to foolish investors who are looking to put money into green technology, much like many of the "this project will fix the environment" slashvertisements that pop up from time to time.
The trouble is that most green technology is along the lines of cheap and simple, not expensive and patentable. For instance, this gizmo might even work, but is going to have far less effect on your greenhouse gas emissions than living near where you work or commuting by public transit. Similarly, you could do a lot more the environment by setting your thermostat lower in the winter and higher in the summer than you could possibly manage via this effort to cut your electric bill slightly. The reason that this sort of technology gets so much press is not because it could significantly help with reducing your impact on the environment, but because it feels like it ought to without forcing anyone to significantly change what they're going to do anyways.
Smoking forces me to take a break from what I'm doing every once in a while, so I get to separate myself from it. Then I get 5 minutes or so of time to contemplate or for abstract thought.
Why do you need to smoke when you take your 5 minutes of contemplation time? Why not just grab some fresh air, or at least wander away from your desk for a bit?
Real estate can't run, but any development on that real estate can and will.
Face it. The reason that corporations pull these kind of tax shenanigans is that they got these loopholes written in the first place in exchange for bribes^Hcampaign contributions. And while an effective tax rate of 0% would make sure that the corporate profits are declared in the US, they still wouldn't create any revenue whatsoever to the US treasury.
If [you] avoid all distractions while driving on a long trip one of two things will get you: highway hypnosis (a real form of hypnosis sometimes including post-hypnotic amnesia) or your brain will make up its own distractions. Really, has anyone here not had the experience of driving somewhere, getting there, and realizing that there is a chunk of time missing in your memory for part of the drive?
No, I haven't. Of course, that might have had something to do with taking periodic breaks at those places they set up on the sides of highways specifically to help people not get highway hypnosis.
Actually, not all of 'em are. Many of them can be found in smaller municipal governments or in the lower houses of state government. They tend to be either in their first term, or have no political ambitions beyond their current office. In other words, you probably have never heard of them.
I've even known some of these folks personally. For instance, there was a guy who became mayor back in my hometown who was formerly the principal at the local high school. He ran because he thought the incumbent was ruining the school system, won because he convinced the voters that he could fix it, and won a couple more terms because he did a good job of running things. He then retired from politics and went back to being a high school principal.
If we're talking companies based in the countries that lose the war, then you'd be correct. But in a lot of cases (including those in the 1930's and 40's) we're talking about outside multinationals, who can move their capital quite easily from one country to another. Ergo they can and will play they short-term gain in, say, Spain, then head to Germany for a decade, then to Argentina, and so on.
It's remarkably similar to investments in fundamentally unsound securities. The idea is to make a bundle while everything looks great, and leave someone else holding the bag when it goes sour.
Basil Exposition: Austin, the Cold War is over! Austin Powers: Finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh comrades? Eh? Basil Exposition: Austin... we won. Austin Powers: Oh, smashing, groovy, yay capitalism!
But why the hell would an arbitrary corporation prefer having the laws change at the pleasure of a demagogue who may or may not like them instead of having an easily "lobbied"/bribed legislature?
Because bribing 1 despot is cheaper and easier than bribing the 300 or so congresscritters/MPs needed to get a majority. Plus you do so much work to buy off particular politicians, and then the pesky public votes for someone else and you need to start over again.
I never understood the argument that capitalism would lead to anything like democracy.
The reason you can't understand that argument is that it's complete BS. It was created to try to convince Americans that the reason our government is making it extremely easy to trade with China is to spread democracy, not increase corporate profits at the expense of American workers' careers.
And historically at least, the system of government best suited to corporate profits is not democracy, but fascist-leaning dictatorships. That's true whether we're talking about Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, or Batista.
Don't you mean "How long until this is used in the military?"
The military, by necessity, trains people to commit what are generally immoral acts such as killing people or blowing up someone else's house. I wouldn't be surprised to see them very interested in tools to make that piece of the training easier to accomplish, even if it involves very expensive tools.
I was skeptical of this system from the get-go, but got overruled by some "visionaries" who had bought into the whole thin client argument with a religious fervor.
Or alternately, those "visionaries" were expecting to profit personally from the thin client manufacturer.
It's not the energy reserves of Afghanistan that are significant in that war. It's the proposed oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea region that the oil companies, and Unocal in particular were after. They tried to make a deal with the Taliban, but the Taliban wouldn't play dice. So they overthrew the government using US troops, replaced the Taliban with Hamid Karzai, who had just so happened to have done some work for Unocal. Shortly afterwords, Karzai gave his approval for the deal.
Maj Gen Smedley Butler in particular is very enlightening about the real purposes and causes of war.
You are of course never going to achieve your goal, largely because physicists aren't invited to cocktail parties. At least, not since one of them tried to sit down with the hostess and show her how to derive the Schrodinger Equation.
I recall in Freshman Composition my professor used a similar example of how NOT to write. He then rewrote it, emphasizing that simple words help communicate. Multi-syllablic words merely indicate the speaker is trying to SOUND smarter than he really is, but communicates next to nothing to his readers or listeners, because his real message is hidden behind confusion.
And your mistake is thinking that that was not the intent of management-speak. The standard way for a less-than-competent manager to protect his/her job is to obfuscate like crazy, because then they can't be held responsible for anything.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a few key differences between Iraq/Afghanistan and Vietnam (although a huge amount of similarity):
1. No draft. For the vast majority of Americans this is a war that other people fight.
2. A much more sophisticated propaganda machine from the DoD, intelligence agencies, and defense contractor industry.
3. An excuse for the war that (a) actually happened and (b) hits much closer to home for a lot of people.
political views are more hereditary now, instead of come to through introspection.
Really? This isn't a new phenomenon in the slightest. To quote W.S. Gilbert, writing in 1900 (in Iolanthe):
"I often think it's comical – Fal, lal, la!
How Nature always does contrive – Fal, lal, la!
That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!"
I'm not sure about that particular article, but the trend in general is nothing new, and not a joke. When the economy goes south, more women end up doing sex work in order to make ends meet. One could argue about the morality of that decision, but the reality of it is hard to dispute.
Sounds like you need to work someplace with more enlightened management. My office has a pretty clear set of rules about time management:
- Get your work done when you said you would. Estimates can be revised as need be, but will be questioned and negotiated.
- Be at any meetings that you are scheduled to be at.
- How you do that is essentially up to you. If you want to work 10A-7P, or 7A-4P, that's your business.
In other words, this is a pitch to foolish investors who are looking to put money into green technology, much like many of the "this project will fix the environment" slashvertisements that pop up from time to time.
The trouble is that most green technology is along the lines of cheap and simple, not expensive and patentable. For instance, this gizmo might even work, but is going to have far less effect on your greenhouse gas emissions than living near where you work or commuting by public transit. Similarly, you could do a lot more the environment by setting your thermostat lower in the winter and higher in the summer than you could possibly manage via this effort to cut your electric bill slightly. The reason that this sort of technology gets so much press is not because it could significantly help with reducing your impact on the environment, but because it feels like it ought to without forcing anyone to significantly change what they're going to do anyways.
Smoking forces me to take a break from what I'm doing every once in a while, so I get to separate myself from it. Then I get 5 minutes or so of time to contemplate or for abstract thought.
Why do you need to smoke when you take your 5 minutes of contemplation time? Why not just grab some fresh air, or at least wander away from your desk for a bit?
Real estate can't run, but any development on that real estate can and will.
Face it. The reason that corporations pull these kind of tax shenanigans is that they got these loopholes written in the first place in exchange for bribes^Hcampaign contributions. And while an effective tax rate of 0% would make sure that the corporate profits are declared in the US, they still wouldn't create any revenue whatsoever to the US treasury.
To quote the robot: "Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to fold a towel. Call that job satisfaction, cause I don't."
Drat. And here I was wondering when NASA was going to launch the Dupre Space Telescope.
If [you] avoid all distractions while driving on a long trip one of two things will get you: highway hypnosis (a real form of hypnosis sometimes including post-hypnotic amnesia) or your brain will make up its own distractions. Really, has anyone here not had the experience of driving somewhere, getting there, and realizing that there is a chunk of time missing in your memory for part of the drive?
No, I haven't. Of course, that might have had something to do with taking periodic breaks at those places they set up on the sides of highways specifically to help people not get highway hypnosis.
Actually, not all of 'em are. Many of them can be found in smaller municipal governments or in the lower houses of state government. They tend to be either in their first term, or have no political ambitions beyond their current office. In other words, you probably have never heard of them.
I've even known some of these folks personally. For instance, there was a guy who became mayor back in my hometown who was formerly the principal at the local high school. He ran because he thought the incumbent was ruining the school system, won because he convinced the voters that he could fix it, and won a couple more terms because he did a good job of running things. He then retired from politics and went back to being a high school principal.
If we're talking companies based in the countries that lose the war, then you'd be correct. But in a lot of cases (including those in the 1930's and 40's) we're talking about outside multinationals, who can move their capital quite easily from one country to another. Ergo they can and will play they short-term gain in, say, Spain, then head to Germany for a decade, then to Argentina, and so on.
It's remarkably similar to investments in fundamentally unsound securities. The idea is to make a bundle while everything looks great, and leave someone else holding the bag when it goes sour.
How about "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."
In other words:
Basil Exposition: Austin, the Cold War is over!
Austin Powers: Finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh comrades? Eh?
Basil Exposition: Austin... we won.
Austin Powers: Oh, smashing, groovy, yay capitalism!
But why the hell would an arbitrary corporation prefer having the laws change at the pleasure of a demagogue who may or may not like them instead of having an easily "lobbied"/bribed legislature?
Because bribing 1 despot is cheaper and easier than bribing the 300 or so congresscritters/MPs needed to get a majority. Plus you do so much work to buy off particular politicians, and then the pesky public votes for someone else and you need to start over again.
I never understood the argument that capitalism would lead to anything like democracy.
The reason you can't understand that argument is that it's complete BS. It was created to try to convince Americans that the reason our government is making it extremely easy to trade with China is to spread democracy, not increase corporate profits at the expense of American workers' careers.
And historically at least, the system of government best suited to corporate profits is not democracy, but fascist-leaning dictatorships. That's true whether we're talking about Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, or Batista.
Or even better, celebrate with a jaunty tune by the great Tom Lehrer.
Don't you mean "How long until this is used in the military?"
The military, by necessity, trains people to commit what are generally immoral acts such as killing people or blowing up someone else's house. I wouldn't be surprised to see them very interested in tools to make that piece of the training easier to accomplish, even if it involves very expensive tools.
I was skeptical of this system from the get-go, but got overruled by some "visionaries" who had bought into the whole thin client argument with a religious fervor.
Or alternately, those "visionaries" were expecting to profit personally from the thin client manufacturer.
Apparently the side effects of this experiment is time travel forward several minutes. Oh, and the emitting of large amounts of bogons.
It's not the energy reserves of Afghanistan that are significant in that war. It's the proposed oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea region that the oil companies, and Unocal in particular were after. They tried to make a deal with the Taliban, but the Taliban wouldn't play dice. So they overthrew the government using US troops, replaced the Taliban with Hamid Karzai, who had just so happened to have done some work for Unocal. Shortly afterwords, Karzai gave his approval for the deal.
Maj Gen Smedley Butler in particular is very enlightening about the real purposes and causes of war.
You are of course never going to achieve your goal, largely because physicists aren't invited to cocktail parties. At least, not since one of them tried to sit down with the hostess and show her how to derive the Schrodinger Equation.
I recall in Freshman Composition my professor used a similar example of how NOT to write. He then rewrote it, emphasizing that simple words help communicate. Multi-syllablic words merely indicate the speaker is trying to SOUND smarter than he really is, but communicates next to nothing to his readers or listeners, because his real message is hidden behind confusion.
And your mistake is thinking that that was not the intent of management-speak. The standard way for a less-than-competent manager to protect his/her job is to obfuscate like crazy, because then they can't be held responsible for anything.
Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century seems even more apropos. Only difference is that it's an island instead of Planet X.
No-one wanted to "round up Arabs" since that would have been stupid and done nothing.
Since when has that stopped a significant portion of Americans from engaging in good old fashioned racist violence?